Happiness

I couldn’t believe it. I had taken so much for granted but it was only then that I realised that I was truly happy. It is so hard to explain but it was as if waking from a dream to realise what the real world was like – as if someone had broken you from a trance with a snap of their fingers.

I had been lying on the grassy bank of the river and it had been a beautiful day. That really is an understatement but it was one of those times where you just could feel the wonders of life pulsating around you. As I lay with my eyes closed and my arms crossed behind my head so it lay resting on my hands, I could feel the hot sun on my skin but at the same time, the slight summer breeze fanned me so that I seemed to be at comfortable temperature. I opened my eyes and looked straight up at the sky - it was deep blue and endless and it looked back at me with a few puffy white clouds here and there lit up by the yellow orange beams of the sun. I could feel the soft grass beneath me, and the sun’s rays too had warmed it so it felt softer than any bed that I had ever laid on.

I turned my eyes slightly to the right and looked into the river. It shimmered and sparkled in the sunlight and the sounds of the bubbling brook was truly musical to my ears. The trees nearby rustled in the breeze adding to the nature’s serene symphony. It was then that I got up slightly and rested my elbow on the ground, propping myself up before looking the other way.

She lay there with her eyes closed seemed to be deep asleep or lost in some summer daydream at the very least. My heart melted as I looked at her beautiful face – her long deep curly brown hair was swept back and fell down beneath her shoulders and her lightly tanned skin was lit up by the warming sunlight. She wore a bathing suit and there was so question that there seemed to be an angel lying there next to me. I lay there it seems for an eternity I just looking at her when she suddenly opened her eyes and looked back at me. Her chocolate brown eyes looked into mine and she smiled.

Her smile warmed the parts of my soul that the sun couldn’t reach -  I couldn’t have been happier any other day in my life than that hot summer day beneath God’s blue skies and by that brook lying next to her.

We lay there for hours until the sun began setting and the cool evening breeze began to wash over us. After a while, hand in hand we stood and walked back to the house; the river of time waits for no one but that day had certainly been the longest of my life.

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